Henry set for unlikely debut as Scottish cool tempts Barça to Dundee

Pre-season friendly matches are generally rather tedious affairs but football followers in Scotland will be treated to some summer glamour in the coming days as Barcelona and Ajax head north to prepare for the coming season.

The Catalan giants landed in Edinburgh amid the usual fuss yesterday and headed straight for St Andrews, their base for the week, where they will train at the town's university sports complex and stay in the five-star Old Course Hotel.

Supporters of Dundee United and Hearts will have a chance to see the likes of Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto'o and, if he has recovered sufficiently from injury, Thierry Henry when they play Barça on Thursday and Saturday respectively, with contractual obligations ensuring first-team players will feature at various stages over the 180 minutes.

It would perhaps have seemed unlikely that Henry would make his debut at the 14,000-capacity Tannadice Park but it is a realistic proposition after Platinum One, a sports management company, brokered the deal to bring Barcelona to Scotland.

Scott Hastings, the former Scotland rugby international who runs Platinum One's Edinburgh base, has overseen the project and revealed discussions were underway with Rangers with a view to staging a match at Ibrox this time next year. "Scotland has a lot to offer these players," Hastings said. "They are staying in luxury and have the perfect base for their training; the groundstaff at the university even went so far as checking which direction the club wanted the blades of grass to be sloped in."

He said the company was working to attract other clubs to Scotland, using as a selling point the Scottish climate, which he called "a major plus for us". "Teams from Spain or Turkey, for example, want to work hard but are in the height of summer out there," he said. "Training in cooler climactic conditions is obviously easier for them and is something we can offer."

The public are similarly optimistic. Thursday's game in Dundee, where United famously eliminated Barça from the Uefa Cup in 1987, has been sold out for months, while 43,000 tickets have already been sold for the Hearts match at Murrayfield. Gate monies and hospitality from the game in Edinburgh, which should exceed £1m, will be split between Hearts, Platinum One and the Scottish Rugby Union, who own the stadium.

Ajax's arrival has been tempered by the broken leg sustained by Edgar Davids in a match with Go Ahead Eagles at the weekend but they too will be using the best of Scotland's facilities at the University of Stirling. The Dutch outfit play Rangers at Ibrox tonight before meeting Falkirk on Saturday. In between, they will undergo some rigorous training sessions.